Archive for July, 2011

I’ll have to backpedal a bit before getting into what I wanted to say, because a bit ago, ChronoMoogle had me looking back at the previous Sutte Hakkun Event Version 2 dumps from around here.

It turned out that when he tried to play the ROMs, the October 19th dump had screwed-up level layouts. The November 25th dump, on the other hand, is identical to the older “good” dumps. This even showed when I tried a checksum/maker fix and the checksum ended up matching the old dump. Therefore, it’s safe to assume the Oct. 19th one is bad.

I told Callis that I believed the dump was bad. He did a comparison between it and the previous dump, and told me the results…

Here’s where it gets weird, and where it gets the “1-byte-different” title. Technically, that’s not entirely accurate – the download date is different, and the maker and checksum being absent makes for additional different bytes. However, those don’t factor into the checksum or the overall game data.

The very 2nd byte of the ROM (0x01 in hex), however, does. And it’s an “00” when it used to be an “0B”. With every other byte being the same, doesn’t this make for a strange situation?
A “fix” is easy – simply changing the byte back will have the ROM boot again, although you’ll also want the checksum/maker fixes to have the game detect as Satellaview-based in emulators. Yet, the question of why it’s even like this in the first place remains.

For a while, I’ve been using Google for my Satellaview searching. I’ve attempted to use other search engines previously, but had sour luck with them.

But then Chronomoogle told me over at #snesfreaks that he found some interesting things searching on Yahoo Japan for Satellaview stuff.
He’s been trying to see if he can track any ROMs that aren’t on the GoodSNES, TOSEC or No-Intro sets, or on my or Callis’s blog.
So far? He’s found a SRAM file – that’s not from us. Interesting!
That’s probably more luck finding something than I’ll ever have on a search engine!

Most the art so far appears to be based on BS Zelda or Radical Dreamers. As can be expected from a massive art site, the styles and quality are varied.

And I don’t know what that iPod is doing there, either.

On this page is a long piece of audio (A podcast?) where the two participants talk about the Satellaview about mid-way in. Loads of game titles are mentioned, as well as the various radio personalities. I’m taking a good, careful listen to the pronunciations, especially considering he “Kodai vs. Inishie” wars that may continue to spread for the long-term!

No signs of ROMs or the elusive “BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 Dai-2-wa” or “R no Shosai” series video clips yet. If I find more interesting sites, though, I’ll be sure to link them. Ones that are especially significant or continuously updated may even be added to the links on the bottom-right of the page.

Yeah, so I posted about a week later. I tend to like taking a bit of time on pad out my postings. ^^;

I’m gonna assume once again that folks at NND are posting things in response to the blog again. Which is always a good thing.
I really appreciate this stuff. 🙂
I owe a lot to the Satellaview fans that browse and upload to NicoNicoDouga; without them, this blog may not have come to exist.
I hope that, sometime (particularly after I learn some Japanese better), I’ll be able to give back to them in a more direct manner.
For now, though, hopefully this simple message will work:
ありがとうございます。

Bakusho Mondai no Shirikon Chounaikai is a radio program, it’s format being pretty similar to the various other ones I’ve obtained so far.
シリコン町内会 translates to “Silicon Neighborhood Association”, and the show seems to cover various Nintendo news and games.
The title of the NND up suggests that no one is certain exactly when this particular episode broadcasted. It’s tentatively marked on the June 1996 date because… well, about mid-way in, a Nintendo 64 radio ad is prominently featured. It’s kinda eerie to think about, actually… that ad may have marked a moment when the Satellaview’s days were numbered.

BTW, the audio doesn’t quite match up with what the ROM shows. There’s likely more episodes yet to be heard.

“You know, much of the reason I look up the Satellaview is because I’m disturbed by how DRM basically damaged the add-on’s legacy.

I mean, a significant number of the available games for it are no longer playable because of the software-based restrictions the system had. Now, the motive for this was a bit different, because in the Satellaview’s case, any downloads after the initial set-up and subscription were [at least as far as I know,] free (much like Sega Channel, although the Satellaview had a more expensive setup.), so Nintendo (Rather than doing the smart thing and simply not allowing saving to private-owned memory, lulz) put the restrictions on them so they wouldn’t fear losing profits from retail carts – the results were games that locked up after a preset number of boot-ups (in the case of the Soundlink games, the DRM, which enforced playing on a specific schedule, prevented the game from booting up after the initial downloat/”stream”.)

What games were affected by this? We don’t know – new ROM dumps show up now and then with things that have -not even been documented on the internet prior-. Many of these are from packs where the DRM was activated. Thankfullly, a lot of emulators ignore the DRM (but -not- BSNES. True hardware accuracy has it’s catches!), although the possibility of poor/glitchy emulation is still high as a kite.
The vast majority of Satellaview games fell into an obscurity worse than “failure” systems like the Virtual Boy or true “limited releases” like Nintendo World Championships, because of a combination of factors – not limited to, but certainly including, the DRM – that led to a – lack of knowledge about the system, [and] a ridiculous amount of difficulty just trying to play the software again[.]
The disturbing thing about this? We’re not talking about things that would’ve gone into obscurity anyway; we’re talking about Mario games, Zelda games, Squaresoft games that AREN’T boring JRPGS, and interesting first-and-third-party titles that would’ve at -least- been cult hits if they were released on any other platform.

Now, think about this in the context of the current generation.
Imagine if that Zelda Tech Demo for WiiU ran off the DRM idea Nintendo [allegedly] proposed recently. Now, even if the game is initially a success, there will become a point where no one will want to support the pay model anymore. What will happen, then?
Yet another Zelda game – of all things – will fall into obscurity. No, I don’t mean that people will consider it a black sheep like Adventures of Link. I mean people will -forget what the game is like-. This happened to the BS Zelda games, and it took -years- (going from the initial BS Zelda broadcast to NND upload dates, 12 years,) for some folks at NicoNicoDouga to encode their old, slightly decayed, likely-EP VHS tapes and remind the world how that game played once before.
Do we really want the memories of the video games we play restricted to old, manual recordings? I shouldn’t need a DVD+R to remind myself how Super Mario Galaxy 3 was like 30 years from now.”

So, before getting into the meat of the article, I’ll note that I’ve attempted to change the “cake” icon on the address bar of the page to something more appropriate. Hope it works well!

*coughcough*

Anyway! A bit ago, NicoNicoDouga, you know how this typically goes, right? Based on what I could get out from the audio clips, this is essentially the “complete” episode of the radio show where they talked about Tactics Ogre a lot.

There was also another radio program uploaded under the “Satellaview” search, but I don’t think it’s related to the Satellaview specifically… it’s dated 2005. Well, I only have myself to blame for not being able to read Japanese enough. If anyone can help me figure this little tidbit out, that’d be nice. Regardless of it’s relevance, it’s got the “St.GIGA” branding, so it should be useful regardless. The title Google-Translates out as “Analog Waves”.